Vikings of to-day, or, Life and medical work among the fishermen of Labrador / by Wilfred T. Grenfell ; illustrated from original photographs.

  • Wilfred Thomason Grenfell
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Vikings of to-day, or, Life and medical work among the fishermen of Labrador / by Wilfred T. Grenfell ; illustrated from original photographs. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    23/264 page 3
    burned, caribou moss covers the rocks, with stunted spruce, birch, and aspens in the hollows and deep ravines. The whole is strewed with an infinite num- ber of boulders often three and four deep. Language fails to paint the awful desolation of the tableland of the Labrador peninsula. The Atlantic coast is the edge of a vast solitude of rocky hills, split and blasted by frosts, and beaten by waves. Headlands, grim and naked, tower over the waters—often fan- tastic and picturesque in shape—while miles and miles of rocky precipices or tame monotonous slopes alternate with stony valleys, winding away among the blue hills of the interior.” The cliffs rise from the ocean to a height of from 500 to 1,000 feet. The watershed of the in- terior plateau is on an average 150 miles from the coast, and rises considerably over 5,000 feet. Near Cape Chidley the hills are close to the sea, rising to the height of 6,000 feet, and the view from the sea is magnificent. A powerful current coming from Hudson Bay, combined with the great rise and fall of tide, renders navigation here very dangerous. A high, bare peak of syenite, inland from Cape Har- rison, and known as Mount Misery, is visible seventy- five miles. We are accustomed to think of Columbus as dis- covering America, but it seems certain that about the year 1000, while Northman and Saxon were struggling for pre-eminence in this England of ours, bold Vikings from Iceland visited Labrador. In the
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3